Going Above and Beyond in Social Media Marketing

JetBlue Airways is an American airline known for a cheap and cheerful flights offering lower fares and fewer comforts. The company is headquartered in New York and its main base is John F. Kennedy International Airport. JetBlue has over 190 planes in their fleet and travels to 84 different destination across the US, Caribbean and South America.

Lifting off with Social Media

A great social media presence is now essential to businesses both large and small. Consumers are online looking for social media accounts that are smart and funny; they want accounts that are good conversationalists but will also actually listen and bring value to their lives. JetBlue is excelling in this area of their business through YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

On Valentines Day in 2007 freezing rain grounded over 100 planes causing thousands of flights delayed and customers not able to fly for days. The storm clouded the company image of JetBlue and something needed to be done. The CEO posted an apology on YouTube, apologizing for the lack in service and promised to make the company better. The video received amazing reviews and helped launch JetBlue into social media. Although the company received a lot of media scrutiny due to the planes being delayed, posting the apology video along with JetBlue’s willingness to take responsibility helped it resume its steady course as a consumer favorite. With the help of Marty St. George, their marketing guru, they have continued to post videos and engage customers with personal touches to continue to build strong and lasting relationships.

“JetBlue is a great example of how a company can use social media to build its brand,” says Tim Calkins, professor of marketing at Northwestern University.

JetBlue’s main focus is to stay small and create interpersonal connections between customers and employees even though they are a large company. They adopted a customer service platform where every customer gets addressed on both positive and negative feedback or concerns where they can do better. Social media allows the company to stay accessible and offer the same brand promise online as they do everywhere else within the company.

Even though there first stint with social media was crisis control, over the years they have turned into a “well oiled social media machine”. The company has had huge success with their App, Facebook and Twitter. The JetBlue App is available on itunes and androids which helps keeps customers updated on flight details, weather delays and provides electronic boarding passes. In March of 2014, JetBlue’s twitter account was ranked 16 out of 20 companies you should be following on social media on Forbes. With over 1.8 million followers on twitter and 1 million on Facebook, JetBlue stays connected with its customers. They have a full time support staff managing their accounts providing quick accurate feedback to both negative and positive concerns. They also have fun while posting cheeky jokes and videos to help keep the followers engaged.

“JetBlue is committed to providing top-notch customer support to its users flying all over the world. Questions and concerns are answered promptly, and the account is used to keep customers up-to-date, especially when traveling conditions can get complicated.” IIya Pozin, Forbes Article

Overall, JetBlue is the poster child of social media marketing using YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to keep customers engaged and allowing customers to track and monitor flight details and weather delays.

Lessons Learn:

It is important to have a full time customer support team monitoring each platform. With Twitter, Facebook and YouTube information spreads quickly so staying engaged and answering in a timely fashion is vital to social media management.

Keep the brand promise in social media consistent with the overall brand promise of the company.

Knowing when to walk away and not every negative comment can be fixed. Some customers just like to complain and moving on can be better then addressing certain issues.